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Dream garage makeover

When Liliana Moller wanted to surprise her husband for their 10th anniversary, she didn't think of expensive gadgets, trips or even ringside seats to a sporting event.

She knew what would make him happy: a completely renovated garage. It's the one place in their Oakville home that's his domain alone – she doesn't "even go there for parking."

But she wanted it to be a dream garage, with a place for everything, and plenty of counter space where he could fiddle with repairs.

"He can fix anything," Moller says. In fact, his reputation as a hobbyist repairman – by day he's an entrepreneur – is such that even the neighbours show up with their broken appliances.

At the National Home Show, John commented how much he liked the garage on display at Garagescapes Inc. so Liliana secretly contacted Jamie Podovinnikoff, president of Garagescapes Inc., and arranged to have the garage redone while John was away on business for a week. She even conspired with the children, getting them to empty all the boxes and paraphernalia.

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Podovinnikoff's workers gutted the garage, refinished the walls in slatwall, ground down the floors and removed old finishes and contaminants, treated cracks and deterioration, and gave the floor three coats of finish. The ceiling and feature walls were painted, custom cabinets and shelving installed and John's collector 1913 Ford fire truck rolled back in. The total job cost about $27,000, Podovinnikoff estimates.

The request isn't all that unusual, he says – he's done garage makeovers ranging from a winterized playroom for children, to a two-storey structure with car wash bays and hydraulic lifts, to an entertainment space outfitted with fireplace, La-Z-Boy recliners, plasma TV and a beer keg and tap system.

To create a child's play area, all that's required is weatherproofing – insulating walls and applying Flatwall, a waterproof drywall replacement made of PVC (right over the inner garage door opening as well). With a heater, it's as warm as the rest of the house and PVC tiles on the floor make a soft landing for small kids who like to play rough.

In Toronto, converting a garage – detached or attached – into actual living space where someone might sleep or cook or even have a home office isn't legal. But you can insulate the garage and use it for a play area or hobbies.

While using the garage for anything but cars isn't exactly new, there does seem to be a renaissance in "renovating" this last domestic frontier. Garage makeover companies are on the increase, and big box stores are devoting several aisles to garage gadgets that included peg boards, hooks, overhead racks, bike and sports racks for organizing, cabinetry for storage and countertops for hobby workspace.

In fact, when entrepreneur Graham Borden was living in California a few years back, he noticed that owners of eight of the 12 houses on his quiet cul-de-sac had renovated their garages with big screen TV, recliners, bar fridges and doors open to the rest of the street. He believed it was such a trend that he quit his previous career in IT to open a Premier Garage franchise when he moved to Burlington in 2006.

"The garage strikes a chord with males – even executive ones like these," Borden believes. "A lot of my clients say this is the only place they have that's solely theirs. It may be the least finished space in the house, but once the concrete floor is sealed, it's highly usable space."

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A brief look at "garage history" shows this isn't all that new – Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Magna International were all born in a garage, as were thousands of rock bands. But the 1950s-style garage, complete with workbench, Naugahyde chair, and Maxwell House tins filled with nails has been upgraded considerably.

A client of Borden's has a sprawling home near Hamilton. He insisted his renovated garage be finished by "July 1st so he and his friends could hang out watching baseball on the new 65-inch plasma."

Another installed pewter cabinets, a terrazzo look floor, wall organizers, two LCD TVs, a VCR and DVD player and satellite system in the six-car garage that's attached to his 6,000-square-foot house.

Men aren't Borden's only customers, though. Women, looking for storage and cabinetry to wage war on clutter, make up about 50 per cent of the client base.

"With the reduction of attics, the garage is now the place to put your family's things," he says. "And most of the time, cars sit outside because the garage is so crammed with things."

One customer had to haul 1,451 kilograms to the dump before Borden could start the work renovating.

In Podovinnikoff's experience, the garage as dumping ground trend is because there's no place to put things. He has seen that when that changes, chances are good the garage will stay organized.

When two sides started to separate on the dilapidated garage behind his west end home, Colin Viebrock had to choose between razing and rebuilding. He was intrigued with the notion of a green roof but discovered that most companies wouldn't touch such a small area. The decision to rebuild the garage himself led to creating his new business: Green Garage.

He first consulted with a structural engineer, and then designed the new structure with more strength in the frame to support the extra weight, using two-by-10s instead of two-by-sixes. Viebrock estimates doing it yourself runs about $8 a square foot while a professionally installed model would cost about $25 to $30 a square foot. For the past two years, a City of Toronto pilot project, subsidizing green roofs, has brought the cost down even more.

Since Viebrock uses the garage for his car and bikes, there's no cost savings on heating or cooling through the green roof. The benefits come from green roofs keeping the city cooler and aiding in storm water runoff. Though Viebrock grows only sedum on his green garage, he says it wouldn't be out of the question to harvest light crops like herbs.

As functional as garages are, their form isn't always so pleasing – even in the back lane, they are still visible from the house. Landscape designer Kim Price has incorporated many of these structures into her design-build garden projects.

In one, lattice covers the garage and continues on as fencing material, so that the garage "disappears." In another, the garage and fences were stained in the same greyed out green to create a backdrop. Price then applied cedar one-by-two-inch strips horizontally to the garage wall – like three ribbons around a parcel – and added cedar shadowbox frames for burning votive candles.

In another, the garage was clad in solid cedar, causing it to become a background for the seven by seven-foot water feature, which took up just 18-inches of the garden footprint and provided the soothing sound of rushing water.

By far, the biggest challenge with garages, though, is the visual appearance of the snub-nose type that commands many suburban streets. In many subdivisions the car is king and garages accommodate more than one vehicle, and even those garages often seem to be full leaving the cars in the driveway.

Price has good advice for minimizing these effects. She suggests treating the garage as another "wall" in the garden – so that the home's façade and the garage wall become two sides to a courtyard. Adding lattice, or a trellis with growing plants, like roses or ivies to the side of the garage, creates a tucked-in, private garden feel to the front of the house.

"It's like walking through an intimate garden to your front door," she says. "Add a winding path, and the illusion is complete."

Structural elements on the opposite side of the garden lend balance. "Any kind of focal point, like sculpture, or planters or furniture, will do the trick," she says. "But just have one and make it really nice, and good quality, because you will notice right away."

Another possibility, Price adds, is to build a pergola above the garage doors, with two supporting posts on either side.

"You could grow plants or vines, or leave it as a stand-alone architectural detail."

Benjamin Moore spokesperson Sharon Grech says paint goes a long way to solving the garage's visual monopoly on the street. The basic idea is to put the focus elsewhere by minimizing the garage doors and highlighting the front door.

If the house is red or dark brick, and the garage white, the eye automatically goes to the white door. Grech recommends muted or taupy grey because the "only consistent thing on the exterior is the mortar. No one's changed the colour of that in a gazillion years."

Her favourites are Brandon Beige, or Ranchwood.

When you're stuck for ideas, most paint companies put out brochures with exterior colour schemes.

"The main thing to remember is you don't want the garage, but the front door to stand out," says Grech.

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